‘Oh, hell,’ she sighed. When was he going to learn that keeping secrets from the people you loved only made you miserable?
Only in this particular case she had to concede he had a valid reason for keeping silent. Alegra had taken enough over the last tragic year—as Giancarlo himself had pointed out. To discover that her husband was harbouring a dark, dark secret was not the best silver wedding present he could give his wife.
Then there were the papers he wanted her to get out of his safe! How was she supposed to do that now the great man was already firmly entrenched in Edward’s office?
In Edward’s office, she repeated and felt the dizzying sway of her heart as it took her off on another tangent. A tangent to do with Giancarlo Cardinale and Edward’s other instruction. Don’t fall in love with him, he’d said. Well, she saw no danger in that actuality happening.
But falling into bed with him was an entirely different thing.
Giancarlo was at Edward’s desk working on a portable desktop computer when she took his coffee in. Freshly ground, Italian blend, just as he’d requested. He didn’t look up, and she didn’t speak as she carried the tray over to place it down by his elbow.
But just the sight of him sitting there was enough to make her nerve-ends crackle. I’ll get over it, she told herself, using Edward’s advice to strengthen her backbone. Like all surprise situations, the novelty always wears off after a while. It just requires overexposure.
Outside the bright February sun was just beginning to stream in through the window behind him now. And she couldn’t resist pausing to watch the way the pale gold sunbeams poured light onto his black silk head and over his broad shoulders before filtering down his arms to the neatly kept tips of his long brown fingers.
Was there nothing about this man she didn’t like? she wondered helplessly. Even the view of his nose from this new angle didn’t seem to make it any less appealing. Her fingers itched to follow its arrogant contours, then slide lazily towards his—
Oh, stop it! she scolded herself and, without giving a second thought as to why she was doing it, she walked over to the window and angled the blinds so the light no longer hit him.
‘I like the sun,’ he remarked with an abruptness that had her turning to frown at the back of his bent head. ‘My Sicilian blood has an unquenchable need for it.’
‘Is your computer screen Sicilian too?’ she quizzed, making light of his remark because she could see no reason for the sudden change in manner.
He didn’t get the joke. ‘Open the blinds,’ he clipped, a long finger stabbing almost angrily at a button on his keyboard that sent off into cyberspace a document he couldn’t possibly have been able to read on his sun-blanched screen.
Without a word, she did as she was told, grimacingly aware that the atmosphere had most definitely turned frosty, though she hadn’t the slightest idea as to why it had. See, the novelty is already wearing off, she told herself as she turned away from the window, feeling absolutely no chemical reaction at all to that particularly autocratic tone.
‘Any messages?’ he queried.
She had taken one step only and was suddenly freezing to the point that she actually stopped breathing. ‘No,’ she answered, having to force the lie up through her thickened throat.
‘Not even from Edward?’ he prompted. ‘I expected him to put in one call at least, to check everything was all right here…’
Her pulse began to race. ‘No, no call from Edward,’ she denied.
Without any warning he sat back in the chair, then swung it round until he was facing her. With the sun now hitting him full in his face, his narrowed eyes seemed to glitter accusingly as they raked over her. Tension began to rise—a hard, tight, prickly kind of tension that had nothing to do with the man’s sensual pull, but with the air of menace he seemed to be transmitting from every perfectly constructed cell.
‘But if he rings, you will inform me immediately, hmm?’ he probed, so softly that she hoped it was her own guilty conscience that was making her feel as if she was on trial here—and not that silken tone.
‘Yes,’ she lied yet again. ‘Of course,’ she then added for good innocent measure, trying desperately to sound like the coolly detached and businesslike assistant she was supposed to be.
‘Good.’ Giancarlo smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile—in fact it sent an icy chill chasing through her. Then without another word he swung back to the desk to continue with what he had been doing.
It was a silent dismissal she was more than happy to comply with, considering the huge lie she had just told him. Setting her tingling legs moving, she walked around the desk and began treading the expanse of grey carpet, which seemed to spread like a mine-infested ocean out in front of her, threatening to blow her lies up in her face each time she put a foot down.
She hated liars, she always had ever since the day she’d discovered how much her own mother had lied to her for most of her life. So to find herself doing it actually hurt a very sensitive part in her that she knew she was going to find difficult to pacify.
‘What is Howard Fiske’s extension number?’
This second question reached her at about halfway across the room. She told him. He murmured a thank-you. She walked on, thinking only of getting away so she could sit down somewhere away from prying eyes and grimly justify—if only to herself—what she had just done.
‘And the combination to Edward’s safe,’ he then prompted. ‘Do you know that also?’
At which point the excruciating tension she was beginning to feel threatened to swallow her whole. ‘Don’t you know it?’ she asked, frowning because she was recalling what Edward had said.
‘Edward wrote it down for me,’ he confirmed. ‘But I do not have it on me right at this moment.’
Relief fluttered through her. If he hadn’t got the combination with him, then she had time to get Edward’s papers out of harm’s way—so long as she could grab the opportunity to do so.